The competitors for this year's BBC Cardiff Singer of the World have been announced.

The biennial competition has been running since 1983 and sees 20 finalists from around the globe sing for the title of the world's greatest singer. Each year hundreds of young singers enter, aspiring to reach the finals in June. During the competition well over 100 pieces of music are performed including operatic arias, solo arias from sacred works and songs, all with orchestral accompaniment. The prize is awarded by a jury including Kiri Te Kanawa.

Lighting designer Paule Constable recently revealed the world of lighting opera and theatre productions as part of an ROH Insights session.

'If you imagine when you're first making a show and a director is [working out] how they want to tell a story, they're obviously going to think very early on about the set and costume designer that they're going to work with,' Paule said. 'How that is seen, how it's perceived, how it's brought to life is what the lighting designer does.'

On working on this key aspect of production design, Paule said: 'There are infinite possibilities with light - it's very far from arbitrary. We consider every decision we make in a huge amount of detail.'

Paule also spoke about how she got into lighting design: 'I love the technical side of things, which for many [lighting designers] is our way in. I love climbing ladders and changing gels and playing with light but I also found I really loved what you can do with light in a theatre.'

Nehemiah Kish will replace Federico Bonelli for the performance of Monotones II as part of the Ashton Mixed Programme on Thursday 21 February. The rest of the cast (Marianela Nuñez and Edward Watson) remains the same.